1 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
2 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end of the file for license conditions.
5 Precompiled Distributions of
12 This directory contains precompiled distributions for GNU Emacs on
13 Windows (versions before Windows 95 and NT4 are not supported).
14 This port is a part of the standard GNU Emacs distribution from the
15 Free Software Foundation; the precompiled distributions are provided
16 here for convenience since the majority of Windows users are not
17 accustomed to compiling programs themselves. Corresponding source
18 can be found in the parent directory in emacs-23.0.91.tar.gz.
20 If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
21 your favorite web browser to the following document (if you haven't
24 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
26 * IMPORTANT LEGAL REMINDER
28 If you want to redistribute any of the precompiled distributions of
29 Emacs, be careful to check the implications of the GPL. For instance,
30 if you put the emacs-23.0.91-bin-i386.tar.gz file from this directory on
31 an Internet site, you must arrange to distribute the source files of
32 the SAME version (i.e. ../emacs-23.0.91.tar.gz).
34 Making a link to our copy of the source is NOT sufficient, since we
35 might upgrade to a new version while you are still distributing the
39 * Files in this directory
41 + emacs-23.0.91-bin-i386.zip
42 Windows binaries of Emacs-23.0.91, with all lisp code and documentation
45 Download this file if you want a single installation package, and
46 are not interested in the C source code for Emacs. After
47 unpacking, you can optionally run the file bin/addpm.exe to have
48 Emacs add icons to the Start Menu.
50 If you need the C source code at a later date, it will be safe to
51 unpack the source distribution on top of this installation.
53 + emacs-23.0.91-barebin-i386.zip
54 Windows binaries of Emacs-23.0.91, without lisp code or documentation.
56 Download this file if you already have the source distribution, or
57 if you need to redump the emacs.exe executable.
59 Unpack this over the top of either the source distribution or the
60 bin distribution above. It contains the bin subdirectory and etc/DOC
61 file, plus temacs.exe and dump.bat, which are required if you want to
62 redump emacs without recompiling it.
64 + libxpm-3.5.7-w32-src.zip
65 Source code required to compile libXpm-3.5.7 on Windows. Contains
66 a basic Makefile for compiling with mingw32 and a .def file for
67 generating a DLL with the appropriate exports in addition to the
68 source code to provide the subset of functionality Emacs uses from
69 libXpm. This corresponds to the libXpm.dll in emacs-23.0.91-bin-i386.zip
70 and emacs-23.0.91-barebin-i386.zip.
74 Emacs 23.0.91 contains support for images, however for most image formats
75 supporting libraries are required. This distribution has been tested
76 with the libraries that are distributed with GTK for Windows, and the
77 libraries found at http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/. The following image
78 formats are supported:
80 PBM/PGM/PPM: Supported natively by Emacs. This format is used for
81 the black and white versions of the toolbar icons.
83 XPM: a Windows port of the XPM library corresponding to the x.org
84 release of X11R7.3 is included with the binary distribution, but
85 can be replaced by other versions with the name xpm4.dll,
86 libxpm-nox4.dll or libxpm.dll.
88 PNG: requires the PNG reference library 1.2 or later, which will
89 be named libpng13d.dll, libpng13.dll, libpng12d.dll, libpng12.dll
90 or libpng.dll. LibPNG requires zlib, which should come from the same
91 source as you got libpng.
93 JPEG: requires the Independant JPEG Group's libjpeg 6b or later,
94 which will be called jpeg62.dll, libjpeg.dll, jpeg-62.dll or jpeg.dll.
96 TIFF: requires libTIFF 3.0 or later, which will be called libtiff3.dll
99 GIF: requires libungif or giflib 4.1 or later, which will be
100 called giflib4.dll, libungif4.dll or libungif.dll.
102 SVG: not compiled into the binary release, but available if you
103 compile Emacs yourself if you have development packages for all the
104 dependencies. Requires many libraries from GTK and Gnome
105 as well as the base librsvg library. Known to crash Emacs on many
108 * Distributions in .tar.gz and .zip format
110 Emacs is distributed primarily as source code in a large gzipped tar
111 file (*.tar.gz). Because Emacs is quite large and therefore
112 difficult to download over unreliable connections, the Windows
113 binaries are provided in two combinations. The complete lisp source
114 plus executables (bin), and executables only (barebin) for unpacking
115 over the top of the source distribution. Formerly, we used the same
116 .tar.gz format but since there are no longer legal problems with
117 .zip files, and the latest versions of Windows support these
118 natively, the Windows binaries of Emacs are now distributed as .zip
121 * Distributions for non-x86 platforms
123 Distributions for non-x86 platforms are no longer supplied. Older
124 platforms supported by Windows NT no longer seem to be in demand,
125 and Emacs is yet to be ported to 64 bit Windows platforms. If you
126 are willing to help port Emacs 23 to 64 bit versions of Windows,
127 your contribution will be welcome on the emacs-devel mailing list.
129 * Unpacking distributions
131 Ports of GNU gzip and GNU tar for handling the source distribution file
132 format can be found in several places that distribute ports of GNU
133 programs, for example:
135 Cygwin: http://www.cygwin.com/
136 GnuWin32: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/
138 Many other popular file compression utilities for Windows are also
139 able to handle gzipped tar files. 7zip is one free Windows graphical
140 program that is able to handle many archive formats.
142 Open a command prompt (MSDOS) window. Decide on a directory in which
143 to place Emacs. Move the distribution to that directory, and then
144 unpack it as follows.
146 If you have the gzipped tar version, use gunzip to uncompress the tar
147 file on the fly, and pipe the output through tar with the "xvf" flags
148 to extract the files from the tar file:
150 % gunzip -c some.tar.gz | tar xvf -
152 You may see messages from tar about not being able to change the
153 modification time on directories, and from gunzip complaining about a
154 broken pipe. These messages are harmless and you can ignore them. On
155 Windows NT, unpacking tarballs this way leaves them in compressed
156 form, taking up less space on disk. Unfortunately, on Windows 95 and
157 98, a large temporary file is created, so it is better to use the
158 djtarnt.exe program, which performs the equivalent operation in one
161 % djtarnt -x some.tar.gz
163 You may be prompted to rename or overwrite directories when using
164 djtarnt: simply type return to continue (this is harmless).
166 Zip files can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
167 if you do not already have other tools to do this.
171 The precompiled binaries can be unpacked using unzip.exe from info-zip.org
172 if you do not already have other tools to do this.
176 Once you have unpacked a precompiled distribution of Emacs, it should
177 have the following subdirectories:
179 bin etc info lisp site-lisp
182 * Unpacking with other tools
184 If you do use other utility programs to unpack the distribution, check
185 the following to be sure the distribution was not corrupted:
187 + Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will
188 be unusable. Older versions of WinZip would enable this
189 translation by default when unpacking .tar files. If you are
190 using WinZip, disable it. (I don't have WinZip myself, and I do
191 not know the specific commands necessary to disable it.)
193 + Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, there
194 should be a file lisp/abbrevlist.el; if this has been truncated to
195 abbrevli.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking
196 and Emacs will not start.
198 + Check that filenames were not changed by your web-browser. Some
199 proprietary web-browsers save .tar.gz files as .tar.tar. You might
200 like to consider switching to a Free modern browser if your browser
203 + I've also had reports that some older "gnuwin32" port of tar
204 corrupts the executables. Use the latest version from the gnuwin32
205 site or another port of tar instead.
207 If you believe you have unpacked the distributions correctly and are
208 still encountering problems, see the section on Further Information
212 * Compiling from source
214 If you would like to compile Emacs from source, download the source
215 distribution, unpack it in the same manner as a precompiled
216 distribution, and look in the file nt/INSTALL for detailed
217 directions. It is recommended to use GCC 2.95 or later with MinGW
218 support to compile the source. The port of GCC included in Cygwin
219 is supported, but check the nt/INSTALL file if you have trouble
220 since some builds of GNU make aren't supported.
223 * Further information
225 If you have access to the World Wide Web, I would recommend pointing
226 your favorite web browser to following the document (if you haven't
229 http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
231 This document serves as an FAQ and a source for further information
232 about the Windows port and related software packages. Note that as
233 most of the information in that FAQ is for earlier versions, so some
234 information may not be relevant to Emacs-23.0.91.
236 In addition to the FAQ, there is a mailing list for discussing issues
237 related to the Windows port of Emacs. For information about the
238 list, see this Web page:
240 http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows
242 To ask questions on the mailing list, send email to
243 help-emacs-windows@gnu.org. (You don't need to subscribe for that.)
244 To subscribe to the list or unsubscribe from it, fill the form you
245 find at http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-emacs-windows as
248 Another valuable source of information and help which should not be
249 overlooked is the various Usenet news groups dedicated to Emacs.
250 These are particuarly good for help with general issues which aren't
251 specific to the Windows port of Emacs. The main news groups to use
252 for seeking help are:
257 There are also fairly regular postings and announcements of new or
258 updated Emacs packages on this group:
267 Most of this README was contributed by former maintainer Andrew Innes
271 This file is part of GNU Emacs.
273 GNU Emacs is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
274 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
275 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
276 (at your option) any later version.
278 GNU Emacs is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
279 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
280 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
281 GNU General Public License for more details.
283 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
284 along with GNU Emacs. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.